13-year-old accused of stabbing school resource officer released from mental health facility, arrested on multiple charges

LARGO — Kenneth "Kenny" Stoltman, the 13-year-old boy accused of stabbing a school resource officer last week, was released from a mental health facility Friday and charged with attempted murder, authorities said.

Stoltman was also charged with eleven counts of possession/manufacturing of firebombs.

After Stoltman, of Oldsmar, was released Friday afternoon, he was taken for his first court appearance in front of Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Patrice Moore, who ordered him held, according to court spokesman Ron Stuart.

Stoltman was then take to the Pinellas Juvenile Assessment Center, Stuart said.

Pinellas deputies said Stoltman stashed 11 bottles of gas in a boys' bathroom at Carwise Middle School in Palm Harbor, where he was a seventh-grader, on the morning of April 5.

When Pinellas County Schools police officer Kenneth Fridlund tried to intercept Stoltman as he came out of the restroom, Stoltman attacked the veteran officer, stabbing him three times, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.

Stoltman was subdued at the scene by Fridlund and school staffers who rushed to the officer's side.

Fridlund, who spent nearly three decades as a St. Petersburg police officer before joining the campus police, suffered a serious abdominal wound but survived after he underwent emergency surgery at a local hospital.